from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There was a time when making your own alcohol wasn't a completely legit thing to do. Sure, now anyone can just go down to a corner store almost any time and pick up a chilled alcoholic beverage, but if you're a real do-it-yourself-er, you won't want to drink just anything that comes in a pretty bottle. Here are a few projects you might want to check out someday when you're not feeling like guzzling something made by Anheuser-Busch-Inbev-SABmiller.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

It turns out that many Americans aren't paying much attention to the ongoing battle over labeling genetically modified foods. A recent survey by researchers at Rutgers University found that half of Americans know very little or nothing at all about GM foods, while a quarter have never even heard of them. Furthermore, they found that many Americans are also confused about what types of GM foods are on the market. Meanwhile, heirloom fruits, vegetables, and grains are gaining popularity. These are plants that have been grown and passed down from one generation to another -- some for more than 100 years -- often selected for their superior flavor, as well as other characteristics such as productivity, hardiness, and adaptability. If you want to avoid GM foods, why not spend some time rediscovering heirloom varieties? Here are a few links to get you started.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Refrigeration is a relatively recent process to keep foods edible longer. Before electricity, people would store blocks of ice and go to all sorts of efforts to keep foods from spoiling. Here are just a few more interesting links about foods that stay safe to ingest for almost unbelievable amounts of time.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Most people's idea of astronaut food is freeze-dried ice cream -- which astronauts don't actually eat anymore. But with all the commercial space ventures that are trying to create a space tourism industry, maybe there should be more culinary options for zero gravity meals. Here are just a few examples of space food that might be better than a packet of salted peanuts.

from the not-this-again dept

In this era where everyone wants to "own" unownable ideas and concepts, is it any wonder that there's more and more talk about the idea of extending copyright to other things? We've already discussed how the fashion industry has been agitating for special new "copyrights" despite the fact that their industry is thriving, in part because of the lack of protectionism in the industry. In fact, research suggests that adding such protectionism would significantly harm the industry, by slowing down innovation, decreasing competition and output.

A second area where we've seen stories similar to this is in the food industry. While we just wrote about the ridiculous story of Lebanon wanting official "food copyright" on hummus, falafel and other middle eastern treats, there are some chefs who take the idea of recipe ownership quite seriously. As it stands today, a recipe is not copyrightable -- though the description of how to cook the recipe could be. The list of ingredients, however, is factual.

But chefs are increasingly trying to somehow guard what makes them unique. We've already seen stories of restaurant owners suing former employees for opening up similar restaurants, but it's not clear what's illegal about that at all. If you think you can do a better job than your boss, then splitting off and forming a competitor is how innovation happens. Just look at the history of Silicon Valley, and you see this repeated time and time again. The traitorous eight famously quit Shockley Semiconductor to form Fairchild Semiconductor, because they didn't like how Shockley ran his company (as well as his decision that silicon wasn't worth pursuing). Without that we wouldn't have "Silicon" Valley. And, of course, from people leaving Fairchild, Intel was born.

But, for folks not in the tech industry, apparently these sorts of splits still seem controversial. My friend Tom sent over an article in The Atlantic about battles over bread recipes and bakeries in New York. Apparently, two partners at a bakery split up, and the author of the article expresses some concern over the "ownership" of the bakery's distinctive bread recipes. The article also notes a similar split between the partners of the famous Magnolia cup cake shop in New York, leading one to form a competitor with a similar recipe. Amongst these battles, though, there is one part regarding the bread makers that seems questionable and fraudulent (which happened separately from the ownership split). One of the bread distributors hired on some of the original bakery's employees and started baking its own bread, but used the name and logo of the original bakery, and then delivered the bread to restaurants without letting them know that it wasn't from the actual bakery. That's outright fraud.

But the good news in this story is that while it appears the "divorce" between bakery owners wasn't that pleasant, and the original owner isn't thrilled that there's a competitor in the space, he does seem to realize that there are better ways to go about dealing with the issue than trying to "protect" his bread (especially since his recipes are based on old Roman recipes). He actually notes that the bigger challenge is increasing the size of the "craft bread" market and taking away business from the big industrial bread makers. It's not about protectionism of a tiny market, it's about increasing the overall pie of the market he's in -- and that may even mean teaming up with his former partner with whom he split, noting that he's looking to form a Craft Bread Association, and will ask his former partner to be the first member. How refreshing.